INSIDE TRAVEL.

Check-in times not on side of airlines

The nation's airlines say that decreasing the time it takes to process a passenger from check-in to the gate is one of the most important issues in restoring the nation's air transportation system.

They've argued that point since last November, when officials of the Federal Aviation Administration began ratcheting up searches at airport security checkpoints in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

The complaints resonated even louder when the Transportation Security Administration, which has assumed control of airport security, briefly ordered airlines to dismantle the preferential checkpoints for their first-class and business travelers.

Airlines insist that a smooth flow of passengers through the security checkpoints across the country is a key to wooing back passengers who fled in droves following the attacks.

Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta has recognized the importance of speeding passengers through the checkpoints, saying it is the government's goal to process passengers within 10 minutes.

At some airports that is happening, according to a survey released this week by Travelocity, an on-line booking service owned by Sabre Holdings Inc.

But at one airport, Baltimore-Washington International outside Washington, D.C., it's anything but smooth.

BWI is the only airport where the Transportation Security Administration replaced security screeners with federal workers and installed new screening procedures.

According to Travelocity, only 35 percent of the passengers traveling through BWI are making it to their gates within 30 minutes. Instead, nearly half of the passengers told Travelocity that it is taking much longer to get to the gate. Nearly 20 percent said it is taking more than one hour.

A spokeswoman for the federal security agency indicated that screener training programs the agency has been conducting at BWI may be responsible.

"We've ended the programs, so hopefully those times will improve," said Deidre O'Sullivan, a spokesman for the agency.

Slow processing of passengers is not the kind of news the airline industry says it needs to encourage travelers to resume flying.

At O'Hare International Airport, Travelocity's survey shows that 64 percent of the passengers can expect to be through security and to the gates in less than 30 minutes. At Midway, 60 percent say they are getting through security and to their gates within 30 minutes.

Despite improvements at many airports, most passengers say they are arriving more than an hour early for their flight, largely as a result of the airlines directing passengers in the first few months after Sept. 11 to arrive as much as two hours early for a flight.

Northwest turns 75: Northwest Airlines, now based in Eagan, Minn., turns 75 on Friday, a significant milestone in an industry where a number of once-famous airlines long ago stopped flying.

Northwest traces its roots to mail runs between Minneapolis and Chicago beginning in 1926, but it wasn't until 1927 that Byron G. Webster, a Minnesota businessman, and L.R.S. Ferguson, the president of the St. Paul city council, boarded the first passenger flight to Chicago. Webster paid $40 for his ticket.

The flight stopped in LaCrosse, Madison and Milwaukee to refuel its 30-gallon tank before finally reaching Chicago's Municipal Airport, now known as Midway Airport.